Branches from the Same Tree: A National Convening on the Integration of the Arts, Humanities, and STEMM in Higher Education

Lynn Pasquerella has served as the president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities since July 2016. A philosopher whose career has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, she has continuously demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment to ensuring that all students have access to excellence in liberal education, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Pasquerella is a graduate of Quinebaug Valley Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and Brown University. She joined the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island in 1985, rising rapidly through the ranks to the positions of vice provost for research, vice provost for academic affairs, and dean of the graduate school. In 2008, she was named provost of the University of Hartford. In 2010, she was appointed the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. Pasquerella’s presidency of Mount Holyoke was marked by a robust strategic planning process; outreach to local, regional, and international constituencies; and a commitment to a vibrant campus community.

Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. She is president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, a member of the boards of the Lingnan Foundation and the National Humanities Alliance, and sits on the advisory board of the Newman’s Own Foundation. In addition, Pasquerella is host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute. She has received honorary doctorates from Elizabethtown College and Bishop’s University.

Dr. Ashley Bear is a Senior Program Officer with the Board on Higher Education and Workforce at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Before coming to the Academies, Dr. Bear was a Presidential Management Fellow with the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Biological Infrastructure in the Directorate for Biological Sciences, where she managed a portfolio of mid-scale investments in scientific infrastructure and led analyses of the impact of NSF funding on the career trajectories of postdoctoral researchers. During her fellowship years, Dr. Bear also worked as a Science Policy Officer for the State Department’s Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State, where she worked to promote science diplomacy and track emerging scientific trends with implications for foreign policy, managed programs to increase the scientific capacity of State Department, and acted as the liaison to the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Dr. Bear holds a Sc.B. in Neuroscience from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale University. While working on her doctoral research on the developmental basis of courtship behavior in butterflies, Dr. Bear co-founded the Evolution Outreach Group, a volunteer organization composed of students and postdoctoral researchers that visit schools, museums, and camps in the greater New Haven, CT area to teach K-12 students about evolution through hands-on activities and demonstrations. Dr. Bear is passionate about science outreach to the public and about promoting diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Dr. David C. Munson Jr. became president of Rochester Institute of Technology in 2017. Dr. Munson, the former dean of the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, is the 10^th president of the university.

As RIT’s president, Dr. Munson is responsible for one of the nation’s leading research and career-oriented universities featuring 19,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries, 124,000 alumni, $73 million in sponsored research and an endowment of more than $750 million.

RIT’s full-time undergraduate enrollment ranks RIT among the top 10 largest private universities in the United States. RIT is the third largest producer of undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math among all private universities in the U.S. RIT also is home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) and has one of the oldest and largest cooperative education programs in the country.

Dr. Munson has 38 years of experience in higher education, which includes serving as the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering at Michigan from 2006 to 2016.

Dr. Munson earned his BS degree in electrical engineering (with distinction) from the University of Delaware in 1975. He earned an MS and MA in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1977, followed by a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1979, also from Princeton.

From 1979 to 2003, Dr. Munson was with the University of Illinois, where he was the Robert C. MacClinchie Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and a faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

In 2003, he became chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan prior to becoming dean.

Dr. Munson’s teaching and research interests are in the area of signal and image processing. His current research is focused on radar imaging and computer tomography. He is co-founder of InstaRecon Inc., a start-up firm to commercialize fast algorithms for image formation in computer tomography. He is affiliated with the Infinity Project, where he is coauthor of a textbook on the digital world, which has been used in hundreds of high schools nationwide to introduce students to engineering.

Dr. Munson is married to Nancy Munson, a former nurse, avid runner and volunteer. The couple has four sons and four grandchildren.

Gunalan Nadarajan, an art theorist and curator working at the intersections of art, science and technology, is Dean and Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His publications include Ambulations (2000), Construction Site (edited; 2004) and Contemporary Art in Singapore (co-authored; 2007), Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology: Historical Investigations on the Sites and Migration of Knowledge (co-edited; 2009), The Handbook of Visual Culture (co-edited; 2012) and over 100 book chapters, catalogue essays, academic articles and reviews. His writings have also been translated into 16 languages. He has curated many international exhibitions including Ambulations(Singapore, 1999), 180KG (Jogjakarta, 2002), media_city (Seoul, 2002), Negotiating Spaces(Auckland, 2004) and DenseLocal (Mexico City, 2009) and Displacements (Beijing, 2014). He was contributing curator for Documenta XI (Kassel, Germany, 2002) and the Singapore Biennale (2006) and served on the jury of a number of international exhibitions, like ISEA2004 (Helsinki / Talinn), transmediale 05 (Berlin), ISEA2006 (San Jose) and FutureEverything Festival (Manchester, 2009). He was Artistic Co-Director of the Ogaki Biennale 2006, Japan and Artistic Director of ISEA2008 (International Symposium on Electronic Art) in Singapore.

He is active in the development of media arts internationally and has previously served on the Board of Directors of the Inter Society for Electronic Art and is on the Advisory Boards of the Database of Virtual Art (Austria), Cellsbutton Festival (Indonesia) and Arts Future Bookseries (UK). He served on the Board of Directors of College Art Association and is currently on the International Advisory Board of the ArtScience Museum in Singapore and the Advisory Board of the New Media Caucus. He has also served as an advisor on creative aspects of digital arts and culture to the UNESCO and the Smithsonian Institution. He continues to work on a National Science Foundation funded initiative, Network for Science Engineering, Art and Design, to develop and support a national network for collaborative research, education and creative practice between sciences, engineering, arts and design. He also served on the committee for the Integration of STEM, Humanities and Arts in Higher Education Report of The Board on Higher Education and Workforce (BHEW) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In 2004, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art.

He has served in a variety of academic roles in teaching, academic administration and research for over two decades. Prior to joining University of Michigan, he was Vice Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Arts. He also had previous appointments as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the College of Arts and Architecture, Pennsylvania State University and Dean of Visual Arts at the Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore.